I enjoy teaching both at the graduate and undergraduate level and have often found myself using insights gained from my teaching in my research. For example, my paper on the niche concept (Leibold, 1995) largely stems from my attempts to find a unifying theme that would work in my intro ecology course to focus thinking about modern models of species interactions. Similarly, I am currently using my course in Community Ecology to evaluate how Elton’s contributions to ecology can apply to a modern synthesis of the field.

My graduate teaching at U. Chicago has been diverse and I have often co-taught with other scientists so as to be able to learn as much as I teach. I’ve co-taught a course in Community Ecology with Tim Wootton which now serves as a basic course for our incoming grad students. I've taught and co-taught a course on Species Diversity with Dave Jablonski which has contrasted large scale (and paleontological) aspects of diversity with smaller mechanistic approaches. I’ve co-taught a course in Conservation Biology with Bob Lacy and also co-taught a course in Experimental Ecology with Michael Wade. I think the contrasting views presented in all of these courses have been as interesting for students as they have been for me.

I’ve also taught several courses at the undergrad level. Initially my course was an intro course in Evolutionary Ecology for majors (mostly juniors and seniors). Looking back at the students who have taken this course, I realize that about 15% of them went on to graduate school in some field related to evolutionary ecology! I realize that this is likely largely due to the sorts of students that come to U. Chicago and to the roles of other faculty at the University in inspiring these students but like to think that my course also helped. When I found myself getting "stale" in this course, I asked to switch and have now started teaching a course for non-majors (sophomores mostly) in Environmental Ecology which uses important current environmental problems to motivate lectures on basic concepts in ecology (e.g. principles of population growth and regulation, of species interactions, and of ecosystem functions). I’m still working on this course but find the challenge of making these basic scientific principles relevant to humanities majors and to future businessmen and lawyers etc. fascinating. Finally, I’ve also covered for a sabbatical leave by teaching Animal Behavior, which was my initial field of interest as an undergrad and in which I found myself amazed at the progress of the field since my student days.